The Mandelbear's Musings

I'm maxed out on outrage again. This is getting to be my normal state these days.

CONTENT WARNING: abortion rights. If you think this might be triggery, click here, skip to the end, and move on. If you don't know what the US Supreme (kangaroo) Court did yesterday, please come out from under your rock.

This is the third time I've posted Cat Faber's song "Underground Rail" under Songs for Saturday. (The other two were in 2012 and 2019.) I'd like to stop, but it doesn't look as though that's going to be an option.

a little space, because I'm not going to cut-tag this:

[mp3] -- From Cat Faber's 2007 CD, I Promised Eli (Songbook [PDF])

[ogg] [mp3] -- From Lookingglass Folk's concert at Conflikt, 2012.

Notes & Links

== filk-related @ Songs for Saturday: Lookingglass Folk at Conflikt in Lookingglass Folk at Conflikt 2012 @ I Promised Eli Underground Rail [mp3] Songbook [PDF] @ mdlbear | Songs for Saturday: Underground Rail 2012/02/26 @ mdlbear | Songs for Saturday: Underground Rail Reprise 2019/05/18 == general @ Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade; states can ban abortion -- AP as expected @ Digital Security and Privacy Tips for Those Involved in Abortion Access | EFF @ Elevated Access (acelightning73) " volunteer pilots transport passengers at no cost to access the healthcare they need " @ Abortion funds: Everything you need to know @ The abortion pill: What is it and how to access it - Public Good News @ underground_rail | American women buying abortion pills from Third World countries

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end of post.

It isn't often that I see the name of someone I've met, and respect, in the lede of a New York Times article, but here you go:

Tim Bray, an engineer who had been a vice president of Amazon’s cloud computing arm, said the firings were “evidence of a vein of toxicity running through the company culture.”

A prominent engineer and vice president of Amazon’s cloud computing arm said on Monday that he had quit “in dismay” over the recent firings of workers who had raised questions about workplace safety during the coronavirus pandemic.

But first go read his blog post - it's scathing. Here's a sample:

Management could have objected to the event, or demanded that outsiders be excluded, or that leadership be represented, or any number of other things; there was plenty of time. Instead, they just fired the activists.

Snap! · At that point I snapped. VPs shouldn’t go publicly rogue, so I escalated through the proper channels and by the book. I’m not at liberty to disclose those discussions, but I made many of the arguments appearing in this essay. I think I made them to the appropriate people.

That done, remaining an Amazon VP would have meant, in effect, signing off on actions I despised. So I resigned.

The victims weren’t abstract entities but real people; here are some of their names: Courtney Bowden, Gerald Bryson, Maren Costa, Emily Cunningham, Bashir Mohammed, and Chris Smalls.

I’m sure it’s a coincidence that every one of them is a person of color, a woman, or both. Right?

Here are a couple more quotes:

at the end of the day, the big problem isn’t the specifics of Covid-19 response. It’s that Amazon treats the humans in the warehouses as fungible units of pick-and-pack potential. Only that’s not just Amazon, it’s how 21st-century capitalism is done.

[...]

Firing whistleblowers isn’t just a side-effect of macroeconomic forces, nor is it intrinsic to the function of free markets. It’s evidence of a vein of toxicity running through the company culture. I choose neither to serve nor drink that poison.

The post links to other press coverage of Amazon's cavalier treatment of its warehouse workers during the pandemic.

Personal note: I met Tim at a Web conference twenty years or so ago, when I was working on an XML-based project at Ricoh -- Tim was one of the authors of the XML spec. Turns out he's also an environmental activist, and a signatory to an Open letter to Jeff Bezos and the Amazon Board of Directors calling for Amazon to adopt "an immediate company-wide plan addressing climate change". That's well worth a read, too.

CONTENT WARNING: pro-choice activism, protest music, politics. If you think this might be triggery, please click here, skip to the end and move on. If you're offended by anything in here, you're probably not in my target audience.

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It's time to reprise catsittingstill's song "Underground Rail". Back in 2012 when I wrote the previous S4S post about it, and founded the underground_rail community here, it really looked as though it wouldn't actually be needed, at least not for its original purpose (there's still this thing called "abuse"). Right. That was back before the country I live in was taken over by the Trump and his gang of billionaires, jackbooted thugs, Russian agents, religious nut-jobs, and sociopaths. Before things like Alabama and Oklahoma. Ireland is worse, but maybe not for long.

This song is more relevant now than it was when Lookingglass Folk performed it in our 2012 concert. I wish to hell it wasn't.

[ogg] [mp3]

I thought about putting a bit of a history lesson under a cut. I'm old enough to remember the time before Roe v Wade. Apparently there are "coat-hanger deniers" (my phrase; feel free) out there who claim it wasn't as bad as people say. It was worse. But I'm too tired and too angry, and I don't have enough spoons for the amount of vitriol it would take to do it right. Later.

I'm not going to cut-tag the notes, either. They're a mixed bag.

Notes & links:

  @ What to Know About Self-Managed Abortion Care | Literary Hub (ysabetwordsmith)
  @ “Please, I Am Out of Options” - PopConnect
  @ The Return of the Coat Hanger Abortion
  @ Along the Old Underground Railroad, One Photo at a Time | Literary Hub (ysabetwordsmith)
    THROUGH
    DARKNESS TO LIGHT: Photographs Along the Underground Railroad [2002 - 2016] — Jeanine
    Michna-Bales | JMBales Photography    Project Photographs
  @ mdlbear | Songs for Saturday: Underground Rail
  @ mdlbear | Songs for Sunday, too: Lookingglass Folk at Conflikt 5
  @ Songs of the Underground Railroad - Wikipedia
  @ underground_rail
     note that //undergroundrail.livejournal.com has been purged - that's okay
    -> set up undergroundrail.org;
       starting an s4s post, will signal boost on the community 

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In honor of the communities I set up this morning (underground_rail on DW and undergroundrail on LJ) to promote pocketnaomi's idea of a new Underground Rail, I give you the song that inspired it: catsittingstill's song "Underground Rail".

Here is Lookingglass Folk's version, from our concert at Conflikt.

For folks interested in discussing pocketnaomi's idea of The Underground Rail, we've created a pair of communities:

• underground_rail on Dreamwidth
• undergroundrail on Livejournal

We're hoping that most of the action will stay on the Dreamwidth side, but wanted to provide the alternative for people who don't want to move or want to keep their two identities separate. Unfortunately, for reasons that are obvious when you think about it, communities can't crosspost.

See you one place or the other, or maybe both.

Cat Faber wrote the song, and Lookingglass Folk sang it at Conflikt. But nobody seems to be doing it -- yet.

pocketnaomi thinks it's time somebody did. I'm boosting the signal. Check it out. Watch for more; we're working on it.

A good day. I'm not sure why, and probably shouldn't analyze it too much, but on the way home from my "Avoid Avoiding" group I suddenly realized that I was feeling better about myself. No idea how long that's been going on, either, or how long it's going to last.

I wonder whether I would even have noticed, a couple of years and 30mg/day of citalopram ago.

Took a nice walk; somewhere upwards of 3 miles. Decided to call the new netbook Cygnus (mainly because of the Cygnus X1 black hole, but also because of the association with black swans). Hopefully it will be shipping soon.

Following pocketnaomi's lead, I ordered a bunch of mylar emergency blankets to take down to Occupy San Jose. The weather has gotten distinctly cold, especially at night.

Lots of links, mainly about the Occupy movement and the recent raids. Especially, check out Dorli Rainey, octagenarian pepper-sprayed by police at Occupy Seattle, on "the importance of activism" (video) "I feel great. I feel so energized. It's so amazing the effect a little pepper spray can have on you." She's right.

Hmm. I think it was a pretty good day, but mostly I kept busy and didn't notice. Which I guess makes it a very good day, in some sense. I did some chord and singing practice, recorded The Owl and the Pussycat with two microphones (the ribbon may have a slight edge, but it's really hard for me to tell -- I'll have to get someone with younger ears to help), and did a lot of work toward revamping the Makefile that builds practice, concert and album web pages.

On the other hand, I wasn't feeling all that well in the afternoon, so I opted out of the local housefilk to stay home, make dinner for Colleen, and keep hacking. And it started raining just as I was leaving for a walk. Which I wasn't feeling up to in any case.

And on the gripping hand, I did manage to post Songs for Saturday, and made two icons (for trainwreck and Bank Transfer Day).

On the fourth hand, somewhat down on myself for not starting set-up early enough to actually transfer money on the day. Which is minor in itself, but triggers a long chain of associations with other things I didn't do in time.

So... mixed, I guess.

This Bank Transfer Day poster is particularly good, and as you can see I made an icon out of it.

Hmm. Not as good a day as its two predecessors, though the morning included a really good, useful meeting on the web-services side of $PROJECT. But that and the switch to cold weather made for too many excuses not to go out for a walk.

And I made progress toward setting up a transfer from my bank to my credit union, but didn't get started soon enough for it to count toward Bank Transfer Day (which is today). I tend to get down on myself about the obvious negative effects of procrastination, but of course by then it's too late to fix them.

One of the good parts was figuring out -- remembering, really -- one of the last bits of magic required to make ssh port tunneling work. Still having trouble with X forwarding, though; it worked fine with Lenny.

As for links, I was pleased to note that Occupy rigs up human-power after generators are confiscated

My attempt at CARE's Live Below The Line -- eating for $1.50/person -- was something of a failure yesterday: they served pizza at work after the all-hands meeting, and dinner was the crock-pot pot roast that wasn't ready in time for dinner Sunday. (Though when I ran the numbers on the pot roast it came out to about $1/serving, and I had $.50 worth of cottage cheese in the morning, so what I actually spent was $1.50... :)

I'll do better today. I miss my coffee.

I did more work on the netbook, deleting its now-useless recovery partition (1.4GB!), and quite a bit of music work in the evening. That included the last bits of editing from last month's rehearsal, and working out the chords on one song. As of now there's only one song that needs any formatting work at all.

One of the things that happened at yesterday's all-hands meeting was getting a patent bonus, for US Patent #8,006,094. Trustworthy timestamps and certifiable clocks using logs linked by cryptographic hashes. This is number 23.

It doesn't mean I'm in favor of software patents. Far from it.

A couple of interesting links. Take a look at the charts in "It's the Inequality, Stupid". And on a lighter note, Zombies: The Safer Terrorists.

So... a good day. Not much more than that, but solidly in the "good" area. Mostly, I spent the mid-to-late afternoon down at City Hall with the Occupy San Jose folks. Mostly standing around and talking to people. They have about half a dozen small tents set up, and it feels like a friendly group. They apparently have a good relationship with the police, so they're likely to be there for the long haul. I spent most of my time hanging out at the table they have set up near the tents, talking to Mark, who is apparently one of the leaders of the group.

I like this movement -- they're not aligning themselves with any political party (why alienate half your potential allies?), they're making their decisions by consensus, and they're pointing out that things are WRONG rather than immediately making demands or proposing "solutions".

The logo on their donation page is particularly cool.

There's also a loosely-affiliated Bank Transfer Day action: the idea is to transfer money out of banks and into credit unions, which are local and non-profit. I'm not really in a position to close my accounts at Union Bank (which isn't so bad, as banks go), but I'm going to move most of the money in the savings account over to my credit union (Alliance).

I also like their choice of day for it -- November 5^th.

Quite a few good links below in the notes. In addition to the inevitable Occupy... stuff, there's Eric Raymond's excellent Ubuntu and GNOME jump the shark. Yes, I've installed Oneiric. I don't like it either; fortunately I can always keep using CTWM.

Another weekend day with what felt like very little done, though on reflection I actually did some things. I need to prioritize better, I suppose, given that I'm never going to have time for everything I want or even need to do.

Things that did get done include setting up the gateway to boot from its USB stick, getting bagels and cream cheese for lunch (the lox was the second half of the package Colleen bought at Costco the week before last), and another 3-mile walk on the Los Gatos Creek trail.

I'm pretty happy with the USB stick (which is actually an 8GB micro-SD card) -- it saves a couple of watts over the old laptop drive, and should be more reliable. Some additional work will be needed to get around the fact that it no longer includes a mirror of my websites and audio -- those will have to be reverse-proxied from the fileserver.

Oh, and a little work on chording and scripting for Tempered Glass material.

Anyway... I guess it was ok. Links, as usual, below in the notes.

I got in a 3-mile walk by Los Gatos Creek, bought shelf brackets, fish at Nob Hill, and a grey silk jacket at Savers; I drove home through a wonderful twilight, the clouds to the west fading from gold to rose.

On the other hand, Colleen didn't like the smell of the fish. On the gripping hand, she loved my salad, and confirmed that the jacket and the scarf I snagged at the last minute were indeed silk.

I ended the day rather distressed after a long IM conversation (which did, finally, clarify some things, but most of the clarity only soaked through my thick skull several hours later), and with aching knee joints. So... mixed.

Some links, also mixed: Wisconsin cops for the win, and the Coffee Party | Wake Up and Stand Up. But on the WTF?! side, Ga. Law Could Give Death Penalty for Miscarriages. I am not hopeful.

The high point of the weekend was Saturday evening when Colleen and I went to the 35-year reunion of Columbae House, the co-op house where I lived for a couple of years when I was a grad student at Stanford. As it says in the history

Columbae is a student-run, Consensus-governed, Vegetarian cooperative house located in the heart of the Stanford University campus and dedicated to Social Change through Nonviolent Action.

It was an extraordinary group of people, at an extraordinary time. Lots of the people I knew were there last night; many meetings and much fantastic catch-up conversation. I was shy and geekish back then, even more so than I am now; I think I had more good person-to-person conversation in a couple of hours last night than in most months when I was living there. I could have stayed and talked another week.

On the whole I think we look a lot like we did then, modulo grey hair and wrinkles. We still think a lot like we did then, for the most part. After dinner we sat together in a circle and shared our stories. Fascinating. I found out later that I wasn't the only one who forgot to mention their kids, but Colleen got a prominent mention along with the fact that it was our 33rd engagement anniversary. A few people remembered her from Alan Strain's Quaker meetings; she never came by the house because we hadn't started hanging out together at that point.

After dessert we got back together to stand in a circle and sing along with the Joan Baez recording of We Shall Overcome, and share brief visions of the world as it ought to be.

Sang a short version of QV during dessert, though I don't think more than a handful heard it. It just faded into the background, which is probably as it should be. Handed out a few cards. Some people live surprisingly close to us; San Francisco, Palo Alto, even San Jose. All these years...

We need to get connected again, and stay connected. Three and a half decades later we're still standing, a circle of friends all singing the same song.

filkertom posted this reminder that it's Do-It-Yourself Impeachment Day. Print the papers, sign them, and send them in.

Impeach for Peace, a Minnesota-based impeachment group, has researched a method for impeaching the president using a little known and rarely used part of the Rules of the House of Representatives ("Jefferson's Manual"). This document actually empowers individual citizens to initiate the impeachment process themselves.

"Jefferson's Manual" is an interpretive guide to parliamentary procedure, and is included (along with the Constitution) in the bound volumes of the Rules of the House of Representatives. It is ratified by each congress (including the current one), and has been updated continuously through the history of our democracy. The section covering impeachment lists the acceptable vehicles for bringing impeachment motions to the floor of the House.

Before the House Judiciary Committee can put together the Articles of Impeachment, someone must initiate the impeachment procedure. Most often, this occurs when members of the House pass a resolution. Another method outlined in the manual, however, is for individual citizens to submit a memorial for impeachment.

After learning this information, Minnesotan and Impeach for Peace member (Jodin Morey) found precedent in an 1826 memorial by Luke Edward Lawless which had been successful in initiating the impeachment of Federal Judge James H. Peck. Impeach for Peace then used this as a template for their "Do-It-Yourself Impeachment." Now any citizen can download the DIY Impeachment Memorial and submit it, making it possible for Americans to do what our representatives have been unwilling to do. The idea is for so many people to submit the Memorial that it cannot be ignored.

Feel free to download it, print out TWO copies, fill in your relevant information in the blanks (name, State, etc.), and send in two letters today (One to the head of the Judiciary, and the other to John Conyers lead Democrat in the House Judiciary). There's also extra credit for sending a DIY Impeachment to your own representative.